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The Avengers 4.5: Death at Bargain Prices
Great title, and the best episode of the season so far.
Brian Clemens fashions a fine, larger-than-life teleplay brought effectively to
the screen by Ealing man Charles Crichton, mustering strong support from
returnees Andre “Quatermass” Morell (Death
of a Batman) and TP McKenna (Trojan Horse).

Twin Peaks 3.16: No knock, no doorbell.
(SPOILERS) Well, he’s back. Finally (Mike was speaking for the entire
viewing audience there). And he’s 100%! That Lynch faded in the Twin Peaks theme to announce the fully
restored Special Agent Dale Cooper is indication enough that Coop’s the show’s
emotional anchor, its comfort and strength, and without him, however good the
show is – and it has been very, very good – there’s something missing. Not that
the show should be mired in formula, but Coop-free, the Twin Peaks-verse is a starker, more forbidding place. The other
event of the episode – and No knock, no
doorbell is brimming with them, so maybe that’s being a little subjective –
is the insight into what is going on with Audrey.

In the Mouth of Madness (1994)
(SPOILERS) The concluding chapter of John Carpenter’s unofficial Apocalypse Trilogy (preceded by The Thing and Prince of Darkness) is also, sadly, his last great movie. Indeed, it stands apart in the qualitative wilderness that beset him during the ‘90s (not for want of output). Michael De Luca’s screenplay had been doing the rounds since the ‘80s, even turned down by Carpenter at one point, and it proves ideal fodder for the director, bringing out the best in him. Even cinematographer Gary K Kibbe seems inspired enough to rise to the occasion. It could do without the chugging rawk soundtrack, perhaps, but then, that was increasingly where Carpenter’s interests resided (as opposed to making decent movies).

The Avengers 4.4:Dial
a Deadly Number Dial a Deadly Number
features a number of memorable scenes and abundant witty dialogue, as well as a return by the
then-in-everything Peter Bowles, but despite strong direction from series
stalwart Don Leaver, it’s difficult to care very much about who’s doing what to
whom in Roger Marshall’s teleplay.

The Avengers 4.3: The Master Minds The Master Minds hitches
its wagon to the not uncommon Avengers
trope of dark deeds done under the veil of night. We previously encountered it
in The Town of No Return, but Robert
Banks Stewart (best known for Bergerac,
but best known genre-wise for his two Tom Baker Doctor Who stories; likewise, he also penned only two teleplays for
The Avengers) makes this episode more
distinctive, with its mind control and spycraft, while Peter Graham Scott, in
his third contribution to the show on the trot, pulls out all the stops,
particularly with a highly creative climactic fight sequence that avoids the usual
issue of overly-evident stunt doubles.

Kubo and the Two Strings (2016)
(SPOILERS) Laika studios have received much acclaim for
their undoubtedly first-rate stop motion animation technique, but I’ve tended
to the lukewarm on their output’s overall quality. Coraline was a strong feature debut, but both ParaNorman and The Boxtrolls
came up short for me. Kubo and the Two
Strings represents a significant uptick, one that shows off a mastery of
tone and atmosphere, but it also suggests Laika still need to beef up their script
department.

One More Time with Feeling (2016)
Perhaps the aspect most underlining the legitimacy of this
nominal making-of-an-album (Skeleton Key)
documentary is that the tragedy informing it is never even outlined (I admit,
while I knew the basics, I wasn’t aware of the tabloid free-for-all that
ensued). Nick Cave lost a son, and as close as we come to addressing the
circumstances outright is his comment “Every
time I articulate it, it does him a disservice”.

The Edge of Seventeen (2016)
(SPOILERS) It occurred to me during The Edge of Seventeen that it might have approximated Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, if it had been
written from the point of view of his sister instead of Ferris, and if Ferris
wasn’t only the most popular guy in school but had also bedded Jeannie’s best friend.
While Kelly Fremon Craig’s feature debut is darker and gleefully cruder than
most of John Hughes’ fare, it owes a significant debt to him (she acknowledges as
much), particularly so in cuing up an optimistic, anthemic resolution.

Twin Peaks 3.15: There’s some fear in letting go.
Just two episodes ago, Big Ed was nursing a solitary late
night cup-a-soup and looking as if nothing could ever come right. And even here,
it seems as if, having finally been finally let off the leash by Nadine, he’ll be
reduced to a coffee and cyanide. So the reparatory hand on his shoulder,
signalling Norma is ready to be there with him for evermore, seems too good to
be true. I’m wary that Lynch and Frost won’t just pull the rug from under them,
and how long Nadine, who thanks to Dr Amp shows no fear in letting go, will
remain in her golden, shovelled-up state.

Atomic Blonde (2017)
(SPOILERS) Well, I can certainly see why Focus Features
opted to change the title from The
Coldest City (the name of the graphic novel from which this is adapted). The Coldest City evokes a nourish, dour,
subdued tone, a movie of slow-burn intrigue in the vein of John Le Carré. Atomic Blonde, to paraphrase its
introductory text, is not that movie. As such, there’s something of a mismatch
here, of the kind of Cold War tale it has its roots in and the furious, pop-soaked
action spectacle director David Leitch is intent on turning it into. In the
main, his choices succeed, but the result isn’t quite the clean getaway of his
earlier (co-directed) John Wick.

Star Trek: First Contact (1996)
(SPOILERS) Star Trek: First
Contact (also known as plain First
Contact, back when “Star Trek” in
the title wasn’t necessarily a selling point to the great unwashed. Or should
that be great washed?) is probably about as good as a ST:TNG movie could be, in as much as it actively rejects much of
what made the TV series what it is: starchy, placid, smug, platitudinous
exchanges about how evolved humanity has become in the 25th century.
Yeah, there’s a fair bit of that here too, but it mainly recognises that what
made the series good, when it was good,
was dense, time travel plotting and Borg. Mostly Borg. Until Borg became, like
any golden egg, overcooked. Oh, and there’s that other hallowed element of the seven
seasons, the goddam holodeck, but the less said about that the better. Well,
maybe a paragraph. First Contact is a
solid movie, though, overcoming its inherent limitations to make it, by some
distance, the best of the four big screen outings with Pic…

The Avengers 4.2: The Murder Market
Tony Williamson’s first teleplay for the series picks up
where Brian Clemens left off and then some, with murderous goings-on around marriage-making
outfit Togetherness Inc (“Where there is
always a happy ending”). Peter Graham Scott, in his first of four directing
credits, sets out a winning stall where cartoonishness and stylisation are the
order of the day. As is the essential absurdity of the English gentleman, with
Steed’s impeccable credentials called on to illustrious effect not seen since The Charmers.

The Avengers 4.1:The
Town of No Return The Avengers as
most of us know it (but not in colour) arrives fully-fledged in The Town of No Return: glossier, more
eccentric, more heightened, camper, more knowing and more playful. It marks the
beginning of slumming it film directors coming on board (Roy Ward Baker) and
sees Brian Clemens marking out the future template. And the Steed and Mrs Peel
relationship is fully established from the off (albeit, this both was and wasn’t
the first episode filmed). If the Steed and Cathy Gale chemistry relied on him
being impertinently suggestive, Steed and Emma is very much a mutual thing.

Twin Peaks 3.14: We are like the Dreamer.
(SPOILERS) In an episode as consistently dazzling as this,
piling incident upon incident and joining the dots to the extent it does, you
almost begin to wonder if Lynch is making too
much sense. There’s a notable upping of the pace in We are like the Dreamer, such that Chad’s apprehension is almost
incidental, and if the convergence at Jack Rabbit’s Tower didn’t bring the FBI
in with it, their alignment with Dougie Coop can be only just around the
corner.

Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey (1991)
(SPOILERS) The game of how few sequels are actually better than the original is so well worn, it was old when Scream 2 made a major meta thing out of it (and it wasn’t). Bill & Ted Go to Hell, as Bill & Ted’s Bogus Journey was originally called, is one such, not that Excellent Adventure is anything to be sneezed at, but this one’s more confident, even more playful, more assured and more smartly stupid. And in Peter Hewitt it has a director with a much more overt and fittingly cartoonish style than the amiably pedestrian Stephen Herrick.

Evil Bill: First, we totally kill Bill and Ted.Evil Ted: Then we take over their lives.
My recollection of the picture’s general consensus was that it surpassed the sleeper hit original, but Rotten Tomatoes’ review aggregator suggests a less universal response. And, while it didn’t rock any oceans at the box office, Bogus Journey and Point Break did quite nicely for Keanu Reeves in the summer of ’91 (inflatio…

Twin Peaks 3.13: What is the story, Charlie?
(SPOILERS) After the relative wheel-spinning of the previous
episode, What is the story, Charlie?
makes up for it and then some, with hugely satisfying Evil Coop and Dougie Coop
plotlines and several really nice little moments back in Peaks itself. Damn it,
they’re making me care about characters I always found tiresome in the
original!

Anthony Sinclair:
Dougie saved my life. Thank you, Dougie.Dougie-Coop: Thank Dougie.
I’m betting Tom Sizemore loves playing Anthony Sinclair.
It’s so entirely against his type – “a
weak fucking coward” as John Savage’s bent cop puts it – there’s an added
enjoyment factor to seeing Sinclair break down and confess upon having Dougie-Coop
massage his dandruff-coated shoulders. Dougie-Coop’s idiot savant ability to
unknowingly bring about exactly the most positive solution is verging on the
Clouseau-like (“I tried to poison Dougie,
he saw right through me”), such that now even the crooked cops are
implicated (whil…